


Days Of Future Passed

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2009, Dean + Dean, Episode: The End, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-14
Updated: 2010-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-11 20:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/116555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He follows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Days Of Future Passed

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to for the speedy beta and the awesome title. ♥ Mistakes are mine.   
> [Originally posted [here](http://smilla02.livejournal.com/178836.html).]

In Fort Dodge, Iowa, Dean sleeps for twelve hours straight, too tired to process one more thing with his brain tattered and stretched thin, lost in the roads of that nightmarish future. He doesn't dream and that's a fucking mercy if he's ever been granted one, but then he thinks his present – and his future, apparently – is a nightmare so horrifying not even his fucked-up subconscious can compete.

When he wakes up, he's still so muddled with sleep that he startles when he hears a noise in the bathroom. He stands up abruptly, knife in hand, but he sees Sam's duffle and he lets it clatter to the floor.

By the time Sam comes back in the room, he has most of his panic under control and his nose buried in a Styrofoam cup. The coffee is tepid, nothing more than colored water, but it's caffeine and that's enough.

"Rough three days, huh?" Sam says, voice reticent and polite like he's not supposed to pry.

"Fuck them all," Dean says, drowns the coffee, then raises the empty cup. "Hey, thanks."

Sam nods, swallows."Dean," he says, "I-- you know I would never, I mean, I will not say yes."

They've gone through this so many times already. Like any other time Dean says, "I know, Sammy."

Sam's stare is intense, his scrutiny makes Dean retreat in the bathroom.

Later, with the shower thumping an uneven rhythm on the enamel of the bathtub and his body shivering and aching under its weak, coldish spray, he puts his head against the tiles. Eyes closed, he listens to his heartbeat.

 _You think I didn't try, huh? You think this is all it takes?_

He tenses, eyes wide open, but it's just the pitter of the water whispering nonsense and the flutter of a plastic curtain.

*

A lead on the Colt two days later in Lafayette, Indiana, ends up being a trap.

The shop has a modest appearance: a simple wooden sign above the door says 'Harper's', the decorations are plain-looking, nothing fancy or pretty to draw the eye.

A bell tingles when he and Sam step inside. The shop's empty, the chair behind the counter turned backward toward a curtain that separates the room in two. Sam shrugs; Dean looks around. On metal shelves, the assorted knick-knacks – boxes and candles and vases and a parade of similar useless decorative objects – are covered in dust, while fake, heavily scented flowers display unnaturally bright colors. Dean picks up one, a daisy or maybe a gerbera – it's hard to tell the difference – as they wait for the clerk to arrive, looks over at Sam who's standing, back straight, by the counter.

That is their first mistake. Dean finds himself counting the steps that separate him and Sam – eight – when the demons come. It's eight too many.

He counts them all with each punch he takes, each swipe of knife that tear skin and the muscle underneath. Counts them in the blood that runs freely from Sam's nose, in the gasps of pain, his and Sam's, and when Castiel zaps them out and onto the shoulder of the road, he counts them in the wind and the fast whoosh of the cars whizzing by.

 _I remember Lafayette. I got two scars on my abdomen out of it. One got infected. I was laid up for a week._

The grass is wet with brine; the cold seeps straight into Dean's bones.

*

The fever spikes the day after. He and Sam are walking back to the motel room from the grocery store when the world spins so fast so suddenly that Dean has to slap his hand on the wall to keep from falling.

Sam says, "Hey, hey," takes Dean's other hand with barely any hesitation and swears at the blue on the bed of his nails.

Later, in the room, Dean's lying on the bed, nauseous and chilled.

Sam says, "Maybe a piece of cloth." His brow is furrowed as he examines the cut. He's wearing surgical gloves and he flips his hair back from his forehead with a wrist.

But no matter how many times Sam drains the cut and washes it with peroxide or swabs it with antibacterial cream, the fever keeps climbing, leaves Dean confused and buried under a mountain of blankets and still cold.

Everything blurs together in a fever-induced haze. He gets snatches of life outside that cocoon: the motel room and the wallpaper on the wall with its tiny black and white flowers; Sam's voice, quiet and tense over the phone; the click-click of fingers on a keyboard. Once, he's sure he hears Castiel, but his lids are made of bricks and he's asleep before he can check for sure.

He doesn't remember dreaming, only the panic, and the heat trailing from his stomach in scorching flames. When he opens his eyes, Sam's doubled: another one of him who Dean knows isn't Sam is superimposed on _his_ own. He's wearing a white shirt and an ugly-ass, flashy white suit. "Fuck," Dean says, licks the roof of his mouth and smacks his lips together. He's supposed to have five years to fix it.

Sam turns and his flannel's checkered and faded and threadbare on the elbows and the most beautiful shirt Dean's ever seen.

"You awake?" Sam asks. Then, "I think the worst is over." Sam doesn't come closer, doesn't put his palm on Dean's forehead to check his fever. Dean nods. "I like your shirt," he says.

A week later, the infection subsides under the onslaught of powerful antibiotics and he and Sam get back on the road.

Dean doesn't think about the _other_ voice, nor does he listen to the desperation in it. It's just a glitch in the recording, a mistake he's already corrected, and he ignores it.

*

The next month, a hunt in Mayfield, Kentucky, ends with a school class saved and a haunted bus in flames down a ravine. He and Sam breathe through wet bandanas as the column of fire stretches skyward. They stand guard until they're sure the fire won't spread. Three days later, they're digging up a grave for a werewolf two miles out of Clarksville, Tennessee. The following week, a ghost infestation near Mobile, Alabama, brings back to life Confederate soldiers from Fort Gaines in their ragged, taupe uniforms. It's only by sheer luck that it doesn't end in a bloodbath.

And then. Shapesfiters in Henderson, Texas, and in Coushatta, Louisiana. Vampires and ghouls, poisonous aswangs and kelpies and skinwalkers. All that's missing are zombies.

In Oklahoma, Dean stops at the edge of the road to change a tire. Sam walks behind a tree to take a piss, comes back pale, his steps hurried, panicky. He kneels on the ground beside Dean shoulder bumping on Dean's. When he picks up the wrench from the tool box, his hands are shaking.

"We have to go," he says, urgent. Dean's felt it too, the unnatural quiver of the branches, a smell, like stale breath, like dead and dangerous things that hangs in a fine mist over the trees.

 _I remember when this happened. Pandora's box open, man, and you know it._

On the road to Bobby's, Dean glances in the rearview mirror, sees his own eyes: harder and darker and alien, but _his_.

*

In November, Lucifer comes back in Sam's dreams, leaves him more frayed-looking each morning. More determined, too. Sam relates each conversation word by word. Each platitude, and promise, each attempted trick.

"I'm not going to say yes," Sam tells Dean one morning as he picks, uninterested, at his food. Sam's eyes are red-rimmed, his smile serene.

Dean swallows his fourth coffee—a fucking record at seven a.m. – and stares outside.

"Maybe I can stop sleeping altogether," Sam jokes, but it falls flat in the bleak light of dawn, the dull sky.

Behind Sam's head, Dean sees his own face reflected on the windowpane, indistinct in the harsh glare of the humming neon. _I too thought I could change our destiny._

"We'll ask Castiel. See if he can help," Dean says.

*

 _You know what you have to do._

Dean's washing the car, suds on his hands and on the sponge. He kneels to reach the narrow space between tire and fender where the mud's thick, dense like clay. When the dirt has soaked in the soap, he rinses it until the Impala's wet and gleaming in the yellow light from the streetlamps.

 _It will be too late, soon. Hey, fuck you, listen to me, man._

Dean wipes the water with a lambskin cloth. There are two new scratches in the paintwork, a slash dark in the silver lining on the left flank, and the front bumper's bent in near the left headlight.

When he's done wiping the car dry, he pats the roof, leaves his palm there. His fingers are cold and stiff, the tips red.

It's a quiet night, cold but clear. The motel parking lot is empty, concrete bluish for the blinking neon sign.

Castiel's standing guard at the door – standing guard on Sam's dreams.

 _You'll get him killed, too. Worse. He'll be lost. Like Sam. We lose them, we always lose them._

It's three a.m. and Dean doesn't remember the last time he's slept a night through.

The car is glossy, now, so clean it reflects like a mirror: Dean's own face and behind it his other self, real, as if he's standing there, flesh and bones. His voice's broken, shredded. _I know how we think, but this is not enough. We're never enough._

"Go away," Dean says aloud, draws Castiel's attention and dispels his other self with a flicker of the overhead light.

Castiel's by the car with a swift gust of his invisible wings.

"Dean? You look troubled."

Dean laughs. "When he's on fire, he's hot."

Castiel's nod is solemn, no recognition of Dean's sarcasm. His eyes are firmly fixed on Dean's.

"Maybe you too need to rest," he says.

*

"Okay," Sam says. "So the Colt it is. Where do we start?"

"A treasure hunt, huh?" Dean says, but he's just sitting in a corner of the room, fingers playing with a hole in his jeans. He lets Sam and Castiel bounce ideas back and forth like in a tennis match. It's an enlightening experience.

Sam's never looked more alive, hopeful. It makes another fracture speed straight through his heart. He swallows when the voice comes back. _Five years. It took us five years to track it and there was so much blood on our hands by then we could barely see through it._

He excuses himself when his phone rings and goes outside to take the call.

Bobby says only two words, "Circle, Montana."

That's the first town that succumbs to the Croatoan virus: six hundred and forty-four victims.   
*

Bobby's wheelchair has no holes in the back. Bobby's back is not riddled with bullets. His living room's packed with twenty-four hunters, though. Some are familiar faces, some Dean only knows by name. Ellen, Jo and Tamara and Rufus make a single, separate group. Chuck's just his usual neurotic self. Now and then he blurts something then says, "Sorry."

They all give a wide berth to Castiel who's standing at Dean's back in his customary stillness. Explaining Castiel to the hunters has been hard.

Sam finishes telling what they know of the virus. Dean sees the tension mount, the grim despair that thickens the stale air of Bobby's living room. He staring straight at Ellen in the silence that follows Sam's last word, and he sees her shoulders slump, the instinctive movement closer to Jo.

He's done the math, too. Between River Grove two years ago and Circle there are enough people infected the Croatoan pandemic is a sure bet. The only question is when they will strike.

Someone – Hank-something – says, "What are they waiting for, then?" Hank looks pointedly at Sam when he talks, and Dean knows a grudge when he sees one. It's written plainly in the asshole's serrated mouth and the glint of dare in his eyes. In Sam, who tenses even more after Hank speaks.

The following conversation is loud, people talking on top of each other. Castiel's attention is hawk-like, soaking up everything with the barest tilt of his head.

In the end, Bobby shouts, "Enough! Everybody shut up. Rufus, you'll be damned if you don't move your ass stat and bring in the Jim you've stashed in your trunk."

Rufus complies, but not even the burn of the whiskey is enough to lighten the mood, to chase the accusation Dean sees in the hunters' eyes. The implicit question, "Why aren't you taking Michael in?"

 _Yes, why?_

"Hey," Sam says. "I need air. Why don't we go outside?"

They slide off through the back door, but Sam keeps walking past the porch. Dean follows for a while until Sam shortens his gigantic steps to walk by his side.

"So tell me, what's up with you and that asshole?"

Sam has a story to tell and Dean listens.

*

Nothing good comes out of the meeting. Hunters are solitary people, used to working alone, and Dean's not surprised when they trail out of Bobby's property with the promise that they'll be in touch if they hear something.

Ellen asks for a hug – takes it when Dean hesitates – before she and Jo leave in a mean black truck.

 _You could save them, at least. Don't they mean anything to you?_

"They won't strike until Lucifer has his virus-proof vessel," Bobby says, looks at Sam with the severe brand of kindness Dean knows only too well.

"Then we keep looking for the Colt."

*

It's really a joke how they get the drop on him. Locked inside the trunk of a car, Dean has a lot of time to think about his mistakes and his stupid, stupid, fucking head. He only wanted a fucking coffee, for Pete's sake.

His head clears with each passing mile and bump on the road. The trunk's pitch-black and empty, his hands are tied behind his back with metallic wire. He idly wonders what the demons used to track him down. He bets it's the same group of religious extremists Zachariah used to find him. Or maybe it's the competition and he and Sam are just the prize of a territory war, its geopolitical casualties.

 _And you know on which side you're supposed to be._

Much later, tied down to a chair in the middle of a damp storehouse and shivering in his boxers, he only has Meg to wonder about, and her knife, and her years-old hate.

She's wearing a black-haired girl like a cocktail dress; her teeth are pearly white when she says, "How long do you think it will take to your precious brother to come barreling through that door?"

Dean spits a gooey blob of blood at her feet, gets a slap on his cheek for his trouble that leaves his ear ringing and his face stinging in the warm shape of her hand. He shakes his head. This he knows. This is a piece of cake.

"But Sam doesn't. How long do you think he'll last before he's ready to give himself over to us?"

Dean keeps the smile on, but Meg's grows larger. Against Dean's lips, she says, "It's so sweet, pretty face, really."

*

 _They'll get their hands on Sam, you stubborn sonofabitch._

"No," Dean shouts. He doesn't mind anymore that he screams when he hurts – and he does. Electric power runs from an old generator through bare wires, sparks extra beats from his heart or long seconds when it just cease beating altogether. His arms and legs twitch in the confines of the ropes, painful, unnatural tension in his muscles. The power increases and Dean bites on the rag Meg's stuffed inside his mouth.

"It doesn't matter, sweetheart," Meg whispers in his eyes. "It's not your choice. It never was."

"No," Dean gasps, much later when the demon thug that's doing all the work turns the knob to 'zero'. He says no when he turns it all the way up a moment later and over and over, in his head, when his voice's too shredded and hoarse to even produce a garbled sound.

All his world is wrapped around that word, in the tides of pain, each higher than the last, threatening to steal him back, bring him back to that place where he could be numb and alone, lost inside his head.

Until the pain stops with no warning, leaves him reeling and flailing as if the ground's been stolen under his feet.

*

Castiel tells the story of how he and Sam planned his rescue.

Dean listens from the bed, nods in the appropriate places and drinks water through a straw. He's not sure he could talk even if he had anything to say other than asking that damning question of Sam.

Besides, Sam's here in the room, solemn and freaked-out. He's sitting at the foot of Dean bed, hands close to Dean's ankle, but not touching it.

Meg's escaped, but she's a battle Dean suspects they still have to fight.

When Castiel's done talking, he does his usual vanishing act with a soft, "I'll be back soon."

Sam stands abruptly, busies himself doing perfectly useless things like opening and closing his duffle twice.

"Hey, Dean," he finally says. "Alex… the guy that, you know, the demon I exorcised at the warehouse--" Sam visibly gathers himself by straightening his back. "Before he died, he said that he overheard the demons talking. He gave us a location."

Dean _knows_ where; with that absolute clarity that has surprised him all his life, he knows.

 _We're not going to be enough. We've never been enough to stop jack-shit._

"It's in Detroit," Sam says. In the fierce tone of his voice there are all the answers Dean needs to hear.

*

The hot shower loosens his muscles enough that Dean can finally stretch without wanting to puke his gut out for the first time in three days.

When he's done he wraps a towel around his waist, drops water on the tiles as he walks to the sink.

"You hear me out, now," he tells the mirror. "You've got to go. I can't…. You can't be here."

God he's losing it, there's no other explanation for the fact that he's talking to himself in an empty bathroom. But certain things need to be said aloud and he keeps talking.

"You got your chance, man and you fucked it up and God, believe me, I know how that feels. I know us. But this is my mission, not yours. Just… I'm trying, man, okay? I'm trying."

Silence for a long time, only the plink-plink of a leaking faucet to break it, and then a rasp of knuckles on the door so unexpected it makes him jump.

Sam's voice from the other side. "Dean, Rufus called back. He's in. He'll meet us down there."

"Okay," Dean shouts back. "Good."

*

In Detroit, he and Sam enter side by side, Castiel behind, the vague outline of his wings stretched at their back.

It has to be enough. It has to.

\--


End file.
